Mocha Moose soon became internationally known as the place Gov. Sarah Palin buys her coffee.

Now the world knows the vice presidential candidate from Alaska prefers a skinny, white chocolate 12 ounce mocha -- Imagine a cup of hot ice cream -- and Mocha Moose is now selling pink "Palin Power" buttons at $3.50 a pop.

"We went global," said manager Karena Forster.

So did Palin's hometown.

Wasilla, population 7,000, is under a spotlight like never before as America tries to get to know the former mayor. News media from all over the world have been showing up to examine everything from her record at City Hall to who cuts her hair.

Palin returned here Friday, spending a day at home beside Lake Lucille. Outside, the Secret Service watched the woods and the U.S. Coast Guard patrolled the water in a small boat.

ABC News broadcast its nightly news from outside Best Western Lake Lucille Inn. Palin lives just down the road in a roomy lakefront house.

The neighborhood is out of sight of the strip malls and box stores often cited in news reports to define Wasilla. A retired Oregon couple staying at the inn, Corrine and Bob Mills, walked to the nearby dock, where Palin could earlier be seen in her faraway yard down the shore, talking to ABC cameras next to the family floatplane.

The hotel is packed, they said. Some of the tenants look like tourists. They leave early in the morning, carrying backpacks. Others are newscasters, Corrine said. "They informed us that it's going to be a circus, maybe until the election's over."

BIG DAY

Just after 7 a.m. Friday, a stream of commuters poured from Wasilla onto the Glenn Highway, headed for Anchorage. The local radio station announced school lunch menu: super beef nachos. A couple blocks off the main strip, a row of Alaska Cabs sat in a parking lot.

The cabbies expected a big day.

Many Alaskans would be receiving their Permanent Fund dividend checks, not to mention the $1,200 energy rebate spearheaded by Palin, in their bank accounts.

Everyone would want to go to the bank today. Wal-Mart too, the drivers said. And there was the big Wasilla and Colony football game.

Plus, Palin was back in town.

Life has been a little crazy here since Sen. John McCain surprised the nation by choosing Palin as his running mate. It's not just the invasion of cameras and reporters. It's turning on the TV and seeing your hometown. It's relatives and long-lost friends calling from the Lower 48 wanting info about Palin. It's adjusting to the fact that Palin morphed, overnight, into a national political force and international celebrity.

One cabbie recently took Todd Palin's brother to the Palin home, only to be searched and quizzed by the Secret Service, said Alaska Cab driver Brent Sehm.

One of the agents rented a bicycle at Valley Car Rental business.

"I think she just wanted to stay in shape," said owner Thomas Hannam.

At Tuesday's Wasilla City Council meeting, Councilman Steve Menard told city leaders he's had to disconnect his phone, he gets so many calls.

"There are a lot of people out there who are trying to profit off this situation," he said.

"My two cents are, if you don't have anything nice to say, not that Sarah can't put up for herself -- because we all know that she can -- but if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," he said.

The city clerk's office is swamped with requests for public records from Palin's six years a mayor. People want to know about library books and earmarks. They ask for old financial disclosure reports and memos.

Mayor Dianne Keller said the city planned to start selling $15 "Home of Sarah Palin" T-shirts on its Web site, which logged 700,000 hits the day of McCain's announcement, according to the city.

At the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce, employees field as many as 25 calls an hour said executive assistant Lyn Carden. When her son's football team went out to eat recently, Entertainment Tonight was there, she said.

All the Palin calls are too much, said administrative assistant Gerri Hines. She's ready for the storm to pass.

"They come through, they tramp around, that's fine," she said of the news media. "But when they get into the very, very personal questions, it has nothing to do with the campaign."

WORLD MEETS WASILLA

The world's first impression of Wasilla hasn't always been flattering -- often mixing the descriptions of homely sprawl surrounded by natural beauty.

"Charmless strip malls with big-box stores line the main highway; lakefront homes open onto dramatic views," described the L.A. Times.

It's "technically a city," the London Daily Telegraph said, but "feels like a suburban sprawl of strip malls and garages, with Alpine chalet-style homes hidden behind thickets of birch and spruce trees."

And then there's the Australian, which called Wasilla a "small unkempt-looking place, defined by a series of out-of-town stores, a huge lumber yard, a ramshackle bar named the Mug-Shot Saloon with Harley Davidsons parked outside. ..."

Friday, Mug-Shot co-owner Ted Anderson said Palin's recent speech drew as many people to the bar -- and to the nearby Tailgaters bar, which he also owns -- as Super Bowl Sunday.

What'd he think when he read the description of his "ramshackle bar" with the Harleys outside?

"Yeah, that's pretty close," Anderson said to himself. "That's about what we got."

Wasilla locals Dave and Leslie Wheeler got up early Friday to put a turkey in the oven and, seeing all the state trooper cars parked near the Best Western, stopped for a look. The city's about more than box stores and strip malls, they said.

"We use that part of town to get what we need taken care of, but most of us live in these beautiful surroundings."

THE MEDIA BLITZ

Things at Wasilla's Chimo Guns have slowed down since the day two weeks ago that McCain chose Palin and reports surfaced that Todd Palin buys guns there.

The neon reader board out front proclaims, "Good luck Sarah. Go get 'em. Ride Ski-Doos Todd." (The four-time Tesoro Iron Dog champ favors Arctic Cat.)

Inside, co-owner Nancy Wallis -- as featured in The Boston Globe -- said all the reporters coming through have been "very kind and very considerate except one lady."

That would be the Italian reporter who didn't much care for the back-wall poster of presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama with a squirrel sticker on his forehead.

That reporter is now known in the store as the "Italian Noodle."

Reporters -- and people from around the country on the phone and e-mail -- pounced on the Wasilla Library when word broke last week that Palin once asked a former library director about removing unspecified books.

On Friday, Library director KJ Martin-Albright printed out a log of e-mails and calls, all asking about Palin and banned books.

It was more than a half-inch thick.

Along with The New York Times, CNN, the Chicago Tribune, Paris Match, politico.com, and Harper's Magazine, the log includes concerned voters and people settling bets. Teachers doing sections on debunking Internet myths. People calling for that nonexistent list of the books Palin banned.

Martin-Albright will keep them all, she said. "I'll put them in a 'Media Blitz' folder."

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Reporters T.C. Mitchell and Rindi White contributed to this story. Contact the reporters: khopkins@adn.com, zhollander@adn.com, tmitchell@adn.com and rwhite@adn.com.

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Anchorage rally scheduled for today

Gov. Sarah Palin will hold a rally in Anchorage this morning before leaving the state to resume campaigning in the Lower 48.

The rally is set for 9:30 a.m. at the new Dena'ina Civic & Convention Center downtown. People are asked to show up early. Doors will open for the general public at 7:30 a.m. The capacity of the biggest room in the convention center is 5,000 people.

Palin will leave the state after the rally. She's scheduled to speak at the Pony Express Pavilion in Carson City, Nev., tonight.

A group called "Alaska Women Reject Palin" is holding its own rally today. It's scheduled for noon on the sidewalk outside the Loussac Library at 36th Avenue and Denali Street.

Read excerpts from Palin's speech and post your comments at adn.com/alaskapolitics.